The invention relates to an automatic drive-through vehicle wash, in which the vehicle is conveyed, by means of a drive, along a conveying stretch between wash rotors arranged on both sides of the conveying stretch, and in which a rotating cleaning element is provided that extends transversely to the feed direction of the vehicle and that principally impacts the front, the hood, and the roof areas of the vehicle, as well as the trunk of the vehicle, the cleaning element being supported by two pivotable carry levers that are arranged on both sides of the conveying stretch and are supported by a shaft extending overhead the conveying stretch.
A drive-through vehicle wash with the above-noted features is described in DE 195 32 097 A1. In this known drive-through vehicle wash, the rotating cleaning element, that can be reversibly changed in its rotational direction, is supported between two carry levers that are each, respectively, non-rotatably connected with a shaft extending overhead the conveying stretch, whereupon the carry levers, via a cable drive provided for such purpose, are pivotable, with the cleaning element supported thereby, around the shaft axis. Additionally, the cleaning element is arranged to be longitudinally displaceable along the carry levers by means of driven slide guides. In this known drive-through vehicle wash, the contact of the cleaning element is respectively maintained or adjusted by the pivoting undertaken by the carry arms as they are driven by the drive provided for this purpose as well as by the displacement of the cleaning element along the carry arms that is effected by means of a further drive. The disadvantage associated with this arrangement is that two drives for the control of the cleaning element must be maintained and controlled, whereby the arrangement and operation of this known drive-through vehicle wash are correspondingly burdensome. This leads to the consequence that, upon the falling out of, as well, only one drive, the unit is no longer functional.